Chapter 27
They told you the jungle suit you're wearing is insect-proof,
but won't somebody please come along and tell the insects?
Here in the rank growth, oblivious of their Latin nomenclature,
they welcome you with the zeal accorded fresh meat rations
and pass the happy news to friends, neighbors and relatives.
Waiting to use you as a filling station are elements
of all three divisions of tactical mosquitoes, with fighter escort,
the Anopheles, Aedes and Culex types, operating under
mmmunified command.
The Anopheles have wing markings, long feelers and fly silently,
coming in for landings with their bodies at 45 degrees
to the surface and biting with hind legs in the air.
The Aedes are identified by insignia of bands and lines,
usually of silver, white or yellow. They land and bite
with their bodies held parallel to the area of contact.
The Culex variety carry out raiding assignments and
mmmmarauding missions.
The adults have no stripes on the chest or abdomen,
and their habits of attack are similar to the Aedes.
It will be of particular interest for you to note
that they don't care what you were in civilian life.
The ticks are present, too, with their flat, oval bodies
supported by from six to eight short and double-jointed legs.
They lurk on brush leaves, waiting for you to pass,
then attach themselves to clothing and ultimately to your skin.
They bury their heads under the epidermis and suck blood,
but remove themselves after they have enjoyed a hearty meal.
All manner of flies are zooming about. Small sand flies,
slender, two-winged, of light construction, but vicious
mmmon the assault,
as well as bloodsucking flies and the buffalo great flies
of which the female of the species is the deadlier.
Then there are the endless varieties of kissing or assassin bugs
with their dark brown bodies and their narrow, angular heads,
colonies of fleas, mandated gnats and whole republics of mites.
Leeches make getting next to your skin their one ambition,
and enter openings in your clothes — the fly, the collar,
and even the holes for laces in your jungle shoes.
They are perfectly at home anywhere, including up your rectum,
and when they bite they secrete a kind of juice
that lets them suck blood without fear of its clotting.
No doubt the fabulous little sweatbee is around here, too,
ready to foregather in mass meetings on any exposed parts
of your body and drink your perspiration so that they
may produce a form of inedible honey from your sweat.
There are large and hairy spiders with eight-inch leg spreads
that are relatively harmless, and there are little,
mmmunnoticeable spiders
that will strike without warning and hurt you like hell.
Under leaves, logs and stones are scorpions and land crabs
and centipedes dancing jigtime on their long rows of legs.
And hovering expectantly above them are chiggers and
mmmcone-nosed bugs
and an unlimited selection of airborne midges and
mmmflying bedbugs.
Ants are everywhere. Large, small, medium — red, black, white.
Some bite and some sting and some bite and sting.
The biting ones overwhelm their victims by attacking in swarms
while the stinging ones confine their maneuvers to
mmmsporadic infiltrations
and pour their formic acid into openings in the skin.
And then there is the universally uninvited parasite, the louse.
It is small, gray, wingless, with claws on its legs.
Once it deposits itself in the seams of your clothing
it will be almost impossible for you to remove it
and you will go right on getting lousier and lousier.
All the insects seem to sting with a Japanese accent.
